The Ron Barassi I was lucky enough to know: Glenn McFarlane’s tribute to a football legend

Growing up as a Collingwood supporter, Ron Barassi broke Glenn McFarlane’s heart plenty of times. But he more than made up for it later in life. Macca reveals what it was like to know the icon.

Ron Barassi was a legend of Australian football. Picture: David Caird

Growing up as a Collingwood supporter, Ron Barassi broke my heart.

Attending my first grand final as an eight-year-old in 1977, I watched with a heavy heart as the Magpies squandered a big three-quarter-time lead to draw with North Melbourne before the master coach inspired his Kangaroos onto victory in the replay a week later.

Forty years later, across his kitchen table in his St Kilda home, Ron more than made amends for that moment of childhood disappointment.

I had been tasked – or should that be honoured – to compile a book of Ron’s memories of an extraordinary life well lived on and off the football field.

I was lucky enough to spend a few months with one of the most inspirational and uplifting figures this country has ever produced.

Ron Barassi and North Melbourne president Lloyd Holyoak with the 1977 premiership cup.

The book we compiled – Ron Barassi, Icons of Australian Sport – came about after he agreed to generously share his stories, his volumes of scrapbooks from a lifetime in football, and his unique outlook on life, showcasing what a massive contribution he made to the game and to the city in which he lived.

Those months spent with Ron in late 2007, and the many encounters that followed in the years after – including being there when the Demons’ 2021 premiership cup arrived at his home – will forever sit in my memories.

One of the most feared players and relentless coaches in the game’s history had by that stage transformed into a happy, content and reflective statesman.

Barassi reacts after Carlton defeated Collingwood in the 1970 grand final. Picture: Geoff Bull

The powerful handshake was still there. The glint in the eye that both scared and inspired in the one breath was never far ahead. And that generosity of spirit and sense of community, which played a massive part throughout his life, was never far from the surface.

His memory wasn’t quite as sharp in recent times, but those same Ronald Dale Barassi characteristics never wavered, even in his final years.

Even beyond the book, I was lucky enough to interview him working on a range of stories.

It is not as if we were close friends, but anyone who knew Ron or spent time with him instantly felt like they were.

There was the feature when he turned 70 and told us he wanted to live to 100.

There was the 50-year anniversary of his transfer to Carlton in 2015 which shook the foundations of the game. When we took him to Princes Park, along with his long-time personal assistant Rosemary Long, Blues great Chris Judd was almost in awe of the great man.

There was the almost haunting rendition of ‘It’s A Grand Old Flag’ for the video we shot for the Herald Sun in September 2021 as Melbourne looked to break a premiership drought that went back to 1964 – the year he last led the Demons to a flag.

Ron Barassi with the 2021 premiership cup. Picture: David Caird

Then better still, there was the moment when the Herald Sun and Melbourne Football Club took the 2021 premiership cup to his home.

He smiled, kissed it, sang the song a few more times, and immediately thought of his father, Ron Sr., also a Melbourne premiership player, who died at Tobruk in 1941 when Ron was only five.

He shed a few tears too, and it was hard not to do the same.

That little kid sitting in the stands cursing North Melbourne and their coach all those years ago ended up being the lucky one.

He got to spend some time – however brief – with the great Ronald Dale Barassi.

When our book came out in 2008, Ron insisted on providing a copy for each of my three kids with the following inscription in his distinctive handwriting – “Always remember in life … if it is to be, it is up to me”.

Words that he lived his life by to the very end.